About Competitive Bagpiping

“There are two kinds of piping, the trash and the real stuff.... The real piping exists in an enclosed and hidden world, at specialist events, mostly competitive, where the audience is made up of other pipers and a few non-playing devotees.” (Dr. William Donaldson: “Pipers: a guide to the players and music the Highland Bagpipe.” Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd. 2005)

Competing Pipers’ Associations and Grading: The art of bagpiping is centered around competitions for bands (pipes and drums) and solo musicians. A worldwide network of about 15 Piping Associations sanctions the competition rules and schedules. I am a member of the Eastern U.S. Piping Association (EUSPBA), the second largest in the world. Bands and solo competitors are ranked by their Piping Associations in grades determined by skill level.

A simple analogy of the playing levels of bands within a grade is:

• Grade I - Professional Symphony

• Grade II - Semi-Professional Symphony

• Grade III - College Level

• Grade IV - High School Level

• Grade V - Jr. High School Level

Solo competition grade levels are very similar except the highest grade for solo performers is “Professional”.

Instruction: The bagpipe is a difficult instrument, which is not widely taught. In piping the art is passed down from master to student, and then the competition system hones the art. My teacher is a competitor at the Professional level, and teaches the Balmoral style of piping which was passed down in modern times by two Scottish teachers, Robert Brown and Robert Nicol. These pipers taught extensively and made many recordings which are still standard references for tunes and how they should be expressed. Their students Jimmy McIntosh and Donald Lindsay have summer schools in the U.S. and have been teaching for several decades. Both my teacher and I attend these schools.

Musical Forms: Pipe bands in competitions play Ceol Beag (Gaelic for “Light Music”) which consists of marches and the dance forms - strathspey, reel, hornpipe, jig. Solo competition include light music events but the focus is on Ceol Mor (“Big Music”), or Piobaireachd, the classical music of the pipes. All music is always played from memory, and the difficulty and number of tunes required for competition increases with the Grades.

My Piping Career: I have been taking individual bagpipe lessons since 2000, and I also attend numerous summer schools and workshops. From 2000 until 2005, my 9^th grade year, I was a member of the Guilford and Glencoe Juvenile Pipe Band, Baltimore, MD. During this time, the band competed successfully at Grade V, and moved up to Grade IV in 2004. At the same time, I was also moving up through the solo grades: I moved from solo Grade III to Grade II in my 9^th grade year, and was honored to be asked to join the only Grade I band in the EUSPBA, the City of Washington Pipe Band. I have played with this band since 2005, and in 2006, my 10^th grade year, moved up to the highest level of amateur solo competition, Grade I.